First time posting but I’ve been using Infuse about 2 months now and love it. I’m running my media of a QNAP NAS (after testing on just a external HD) and it’s been flawless, but if I could change one thing it would be using TVDB when needed. I have looked it up, know they changed their API and it’s probably now costing but I would honestly pay more for the use of TVDB in Infuse when necessary.
Sorry for rambling but to be specific, apart from Anime where the episodes can be a bit of a mess I found TMDB to be really good at movies and most TV shows but I love The Last Drive-In… and it’s a mess on TMDB. For some reason it only goes by the Shudder series which is very different to the actual releases, for example: TVDB has it correctly at I believe 16 seasons but TMDB only shows 4, there’s some overlap but anything outside of 4 seasons is not labelled atall in Infuse.
I’ve read up on people with similar issues on other shows and I tried creating an NFO file for both the series and for each individual episode using filebot and tinymediamanager. I’ve then allowed infuse to read the metadata, and it will show the file name correct, artwork is incorrect but I could deal with that but because only 4 seasons exist on TMDB anything outside those 4 is basically just an unnamed episode.
Honestly the issue isn’t Infuse I just wish we had the option of TVDB, the issue with episodes has been raised on TMDB by community members but they’ve locked it down so it can’t be edited publicly and the Mods are of the opinion that they’re all separate shows, which I’ve tried doing too, but there’s seasons missing, there’s artwork missing, it’s a mess and the option to access the TVDB to be able to use their metadata for certain shows would be really useful. If anybody has any suggestions please let me know.
And thank you for being such an awesome community.
So I looked up the show on Wikipedia to see what it’s all about; and based on the article the TMDB decisions do make a bit of sense.
My advice (regardless) would be … embrace TMDB.
TMDB gets better all the time, and support for TVdb isn’t likely returning to Infuse anytime soon.
When you find your favorite shows aren’t as well represented at TMDB as you’d like (perhaps artwork or even entire episodes), that’s where you get to do you part to make it work better (not just for you, but for everyone else) by logging in and filling in the missing pieces.
You’ll just want to make sure you are playing by TMDB’s rules first … or else your efforts will be for naught. TMDB is pretty firm on what sort of content is considered part of a proper TV show and what sort is only considered a movie (that was shown on TV). So always be sure to review the Contribution Bible first, any content Discussion debates for a given title (tLD-i with JBB probably got locked because users refused to accept TMDB’s interpretations), and ask questions if there are lingering doubts.
TMDB’s stubborn inflexibility can be annoying at first, but the up side to it is that once you bite down hard and endure the pain of renaming your files, you can be fairly confident you won’t have to do it again, because they guard the continuity of their database zealously.
Hey, thank you so much for coming back to me, I do appreciate it and part of me understands, we’re stuck with TMDB so I should embrace it and try to help the community by contributing information or artwork and I somewhat agree that technically they could be considered different shows so I get where they’re coming from.
However for our purposes on Infuse even if I do contribute and fill in anything that’s missing on TMDB the main issue is getting artwork for a very specific series that isn’t copyrighted (although granted I need to look into what’s involved in that) and that my Infuse TV shows section is now a mess, with 18 series so far most of which are considered separate series by TMDB it means having 14 different shows instead of all series under one TV show which I’d much prefer and I think makes more sense. If there was a way of getting the metadata and artwork right for that show, even if it means creating NFO files for each one I’d happily do it to have everything in one place, that my only issue.
But thank you for your well considered response, I do appreciate it, just wish there was a less time consuming and messy option.
Unfortunately, the only way to create your own customized series with local .nfo, to have all the related titles listed together in Infuse as if all were part of one overarching series, is a tedious one:
It requires you first finding a different series on TMDB (one that you won’t otherwise be including in your personal collection) that has the requisite number of seasons and requisite number of episodes per season, upon which you’ll build your new series.
You’ll next need to rename all your video files so that Infuse will scrape them as being episodes of this surrogate series. There’s no other way to get items into Infuse’s library — all videos must be identified as something listed on TMDB.
Only after you do these first two things will you then be able to use per-episode .nfo files to replace the displayed TMDB-sourced episode titles, episode plot summaries, episode release dates (to air or streaming services), content type/age ratings, episode thumbnails, and season and series posters with ones chosen to match the series as you wish it to be indexed.
Doing all that will result in Infuse displaying your customized series as you prefer it to be seen, but understand the filenames will still be representative of the surrogate series.
You may have success using this surrogate series strategy without changing your video content’s filenames by forcing manual edits of the metadata, but to have those changes persist through time and database rebuilds you’ll likely need to be using iCloud sync, at a minimum, and possibly avoid ever renaming or moving the files from where they lived when you forced the override.
In either case, the S##E## part of your video filenames MUST each match with specific episodes of your surrogate series and cannot be repeated.
Once again, really appreciate your response, it was super helpful but I agree, not only is it a pretty long winded process but the issues involved if I rescan or have to recreate the database seems like it’s not worth it. Honestly, I’ve gone back to renaming them but having them under one show just not labelled or labelled incorrectly, I’d prefer having to bring up TVDB when I’m watching through than having 13 or 14 different shows listed half of which I’d have to go through the effort of creating on TMDB myself anyway.
I do wish that Infuse could allow to choose which database you scrape your data from, maybe on a per show basis, as I said, anime can also be problematic on TMDB for similar reasons. It’s a little niggle that only effects a small number of shows, so I’m probably just being overly anal but obviously I wish it was an option they could include at some point, I’d be happy to pay extra for it as a feature for those who need it. Thank you for all your help though, I do appreciate it.